Shri Puneet Chawla Takes Over as CMD/ RailTel

Sh. Puneet Chawla, Executive Director (Safety), Railway Board, Ministry of Railways, took over the additional charge of Chairman & Managing of RailTel. Sh. Chawla is a 1985 batch Indian Railway Services of Signal Engineers (IRSSE) who has served in many important posts in Indian Railways and Railway PSUs. An MBA and a Gold medallist in B.E./Electronic and Electrical Communication from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, Sh. Chawla has long experience in Project Management and Administrative fields with versatile qualities of Team work and Man Power Planning.

Prior to taking charge of ED/Safety, Railway Board, Sh. Chawla was the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), Ajmer, where he gave lot of thrust on developing infrastructure in areas of Safety, Capacity Augmentation (Doubling) and Railway Electrification. Large Scale passenger amenities like, Satellite stations, Second Entry at A1 and A class stations, lifts, escalators, Wi-Fi services, cashless services, water vending machines, Baby feeding rooms, Mechanized cleaning of stations round the clock etc. were put in place by him. Eco-friendly measures i.e. installation of Solar panels, LED bulbs for lighting, green walls, mass plantations on Railway land, were also taken up on a war footing. Divisional Hospital Ajmer became first Green Hospital of Indian Railways.

Shri Chawla has handled many other important positions General Manager, Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd. (RVNL), Chief Project Manager, Indian Railway Project Management Unit (IRPMU) etc.

While working as Chief Project Manager, Indian Railway Project Management Unit, he was instrumental in taking the path breaking project of Modernization of Signalling & Telecom (S&T) system on Ghaziabad-Kanpur-Mughal Sarai Section (755Kms) involving installation of Electronic Interlocking (EI), Mobile Train Radio Communication on GSM-R to an advanced stage of completion. Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) for working of trains from a central place and Automatic Signalling on Optical Fiber backbone was implemented for the first time on Indian Railways under his leadership.  He has also executed Yard Remodelling and Re-Signalling of Delhi Area’s big stations i.e. New Delhi, Delhi Main, Ghaziabad and Delhi Sarai Rohilla.

He has been awarded at National, Zonal and Divisional levels of the Ministry of Railways for his exemplary service, and has attended many training programs in India and abroad.